To: Greg Lowney
Greg,
The User Agent Accessibility Guidelines Working Group
is still processing comments raised during the last
call review of the User Agent Accessibility Guidelines 1.0
(including your comments [1]). I would like to ask for additional
information on one of the issues you raised (our issue 389 [2]).
I have replied to your observations below and welcome your
additional comments/clarifications.
You wrote [1]:
<BLOCKQUOTE>
As has been suggested before, I think a good steps would
include:
1) clearly label techniques as minimal requirements vs.
recommendations vs. examples;
2) clearly indicate when user agents need to implement
all of the requirements, any one of the requirements,
or select between groups of requirements that need
to be implemented together;
3) clearly prioritize optional steps;
4) and give examples of how a person would evaluate a
product for compliance.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
I've numbered your points for reference. I would note that we
have published a new draft (29 Dec 2000 [3]) that incorporates
some of your suggestions and comments. (I will send you a full
account of how we addressed your issues once we've finished
processing the full issues list.)
1) The Guidelines has been designed so that *all* of the
requirements are in the checkpoints. Everything else is
informative. Section 2 of the document states, in explaining
how the guidelines are structured, that informative notes
follow the checkpoints:
"These notes do not state requirements that must be
satisfied as part of conformance; they are informative
only. They are meant to clarify the scope of the checkpoint
through further description, examples, cross references,
and commentary."
Furthermore, in the section on "Related Resources", the relation
to the Techniques document is explained:
"The techniques provided in "Techniques for User Agent
Accessibility Guidelines 1.0" are informative examples only,
and other strategies may be used or required to satisfy the
checkpoints. The Techniques document is expected to be
updated more frequently than the current guidelines."
In short, because this document does not refer to a single
technology, the techniques are not normative.
I agree with you that in the Techniques document, we can
do more work to distinguish examples, rationale, real-life
implementations, references to other resources, etc. However,
while this will promote usability of the document, it does not
have any impact on conformance to the guidelines.
2) Section 3 on Conformance [5] explains that:
"By default, a user agent must satisfy all of the checkpoints
in this document in order to conform. A claimant may reduce
the scope of a claim, which means that the subject is not
required to satisfy some checkpoints in order to conform.
Claimants must only reduce the scope of a claim through three
mechanisms defined in this section of the document:
conformance levels, content type labels, and input modality
labels. A well-formed claim indicates how the scope has
been reduced."
(Note: input modality labels were introduced as a result of
another suggestion by you; refer to our issue 390 [6] -
the all-or-nothing approach has been softened.)
3) The document uses the standard terminology: must, should, may
to indicate "required", "recommended", and "optional". However,
there is another layer of priorities (P1, P2, P3) as well.
Thus, everything in a P2 checkpoint is required (if you wish to
conform Level Double-A.) Anything in the note that follows a
checkpoint is either recommended or optional (and thus the terms
"should" and "may" are used there).
4) We have some sample evaluations [7] listed on the Web site.
The UAWG has not developed techniques for helping people
evaluate user agents for conformance. I think this would be
useful, but I don't think that we should hold up the document
for this. The Authoring Tool Working Group is developing
"Techniques for Evaluating Authoring Tool Accessibility" [8]
and we will surely base our own efforts on theirs.
Thank you,
- Ian
For record keeping:
- This email is per an action item at the 28 Nov 2000 teleconf [9]
about issue 389.
[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ua/2000OctDec/0310.html
[2] http://server.rehab.uiuc.edu/ua-issues/issues-linear-lc2.html#389
[3] http://www.w3.org/WAI/UA/WD-UAAG10-20001229
[4] http://www.w3.org/WAI/UA/WD-UAAG10-20001229/#Guidelines
[5] http://www.w3.org/WAI/UA/WD-UAAG10-20001229/#Conformance
[6] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ua/2000OctDec/0310
[7] http://www.w3.org/WAI/UA/Evaluations.html
[8] http://www.w3.org/WAI/AU/ATAG10-EVAL
[9] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ua/2000OctDec/0354
--
Ian Jacobs (jacobs@w3.org) http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs
Tel: +1 831 457-2842
Cell: +1 917 450-8783